Raymond Chandler and his wife, Cissy, are finally reunited

Her remains are placed in his Mount Hope Cemetery grave after 57 years in a mausoleum

The scenario that unfolded at Mount Hope Cemetery Monday had all the makings of a Raymond Chandler novel: two deaths, a forgotten urn, a cemetery, old-fashioned detective work and a court order to move human remains.

But this plot was a love story and the final chapter in Chandler’s real-life drama.

A procession of antique cars, men sporting fedoras and Panama hats, and women wearing vintage clothing and rimless chapeaux came to a halt beside Chandler’s grave as Dixieland band music played. Finally, he would be reunited with his wife of 30 years.

“Chandler loved his Cissy, and that’s why we’re here today,” announced one of the organizers, Annie Thiel, noting that the detective novelist’s spirit had broken and his health deteriorated after his wife’s death. His suicide attempt two months after she died is well documented.

Powers Boothe, who starred in the 1980 HBO series, “Philip Marlowe Private Eye,” brought Chandler’s writings to life as only an actor who has played Philip Marlowe could.

The event was scripted for Valentine’s Day. Chandler, who was living in La Jolla when he died, had been laid to rest at Mount Hope 52 years ago. But the cremains of his wife, Pearl “Cissy” Eugenie Chandler, who had died five years earlier, had remained in storage for 57 years at a mausoleum next door.

Devoted Chandler fan Loren Latker and his wife, Annie Thiel, of Malibu, learned of Cissy’s whereabouts and became determined to reunite the couple, with the legal help of John Wayne’s daughter, attorney Aissa Wayne.

At the grave site, Judith Freeman, author of “The Long Embrace” chronicling the Chandlers’ love story, shared quotes from poems he wrote to his wife, calling him an immensely romantic man. Cissy was his “anchor, his shrine of worship, his raison d’être,” said Freeman.

Although he described her as “the beat of my heart for 30 years,” he never dedicated a book to Cissy. Freeman said he never felt one was worthy of her.

Boothe, dressed in period costume, said that standing by Chandler’s grave and taking part in the ceremony “is more than a little overwhelming to me.” He breathed life into the author as he shared Chandler’s colorful dialogue, descriptive imagery and witticisms:

“I was neat, clean shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it …”

“If in doubt, have three guys come through the door with guns …”

Chandler described someone as inconspicuous as a “tarantula on a piece of angel food cake” and fitting in “like a pearl onion on a banana split.”

Chandler called Los Angeles “a city with all the personality of a paper cup.” Hollywood was the kind of town where “they stick a knife in your back then have you arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.”

At least one of the 100 or so attendees Monday had been present at Chandler’s significantly smaller service there in 1959.

Sybil Davis, 13 when Chandler died, said he was like a grandfather. Her mother, Jean Fracasse, became Chandler’s literary assistant two years after Cissy died.

Davis, a retired attorney who lives near Los Angeles, wore Cissy’s diamond wedding ring to yesterday’s service and had in her purse Chandler’s monogrammed silver cigarette case and his ostrich skin wallet.

Chandler never had children and gave Davis’ mother, now deceased, many of his belongings. Davis is writing a book on her childhood memories.

At the end of the service, Boothe said, “I’m not going to say goodbye. In the tradition of Raymond, I’m going to say, ‘I need a drink, and I’m going to have one.’”